AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

I want to know what are the copyright rules and other law that may be a subject to sierra titles?

For example if you find people who like to cooperate and make a beautiful game like Leisure Suit Larry 8, what do you need to know to not violate any law? Let's say that you have resources and a lot money to pay people to make game like Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded, would you need to pay something to Sierra?

You probably know much more because you already made some beautiful remakes. I know many people want new sierra games which should be made a long time ago and if some professional team decide to make an unofficial game, it would be nice to know about the rules.

AGDI was a rather unusual case of making a unauthorized fan remakes but then just being given official permission after the fact (and for the others they had in progress). That doesn't normally happen and can't be relied on.

Normally, in order to make any work based on someone else's intellectual property, you'd need to buy a license, which wouldn't be cheap. And there are various reasons a company might just refuse to license it, such as the concern that your game would damage or decrease the value of the brand, or that it would compete with their own games that they might make or license at some point in the future.

The other legal possibility would be to just make a game that's inspired by the Sierra titles without directly being a fan game. Heroine's Quest, for example, is a game made in the style of QfG, but it doesn't use the name, characters, setting, continuity, or any assets from the QfG games. The same sort of thing could be done for the other series. You could, for example, make an adult comedy adventure game about someone trying to have sex, but you couldn't call it LSL, use the Larry Laffer character, etc.

Or you could try your luck and just make an unlicensed fan game. Maybe it won't attract their attention and you can release it without incident. However, there's then always the risk that they'll send a cease and desist and make all your efforts wasted. Or worse, they could actually sue you.